MIXED MESSAGES

Unproductive! Peaking! Decreased fitness! Fitness gadgets use very emotive language, but should we be allowing them to press our buttons? Dr Josephine Perry investigates

- Dr Josephine Perry

"You slept poorly, take a rest day.” I’ve spent months training and now finally I’m on the start line of my biggest race of the year – when my watch flashes up a most unwelcome message. I feel fine and I know – from the studies in this area – that one night’s poor sleep does not equate to poor performance. But that little message nudges my brain from confidence to concern: can I push hard for four hours despite a gadget designed to assess my physiological indicators telling me a decent performance is off the cards? Are our wearables too often using misleading, even counterproductive language?

Though at the time I admit I was tempted to lob my watch into a bin, I resolved that there were still some big benefits from using wearable devices. They can arm you with data to improve your health, fitness and well-being; facilitate your engagement with others when you share the data on socials; improve your mastery as you see which skills or efforts get you better outcomes; help you correlate data with feel so you can benchmark your perception of effort; and they can, if they match your motivation style, push you into training more effectively. But none of that excuses the start-line faux pas.